bau10: aren’t we there yet?

This week we’re fi­nal­ly awake. Be­cause a stu­dent has brought in REAL 100% Japan­ese tea. As a counter to the last blog post about what Amer­i­cans think TEA ac­tu­al­ly is.

Bit­ter, green and strong. No sweet­ness here, some wa­ter and we’re ready to jump in.

(Re­al­ly hop­ing this ac­tu­al­ly is tea)

de­gen­er­at­ing
Re­ac­tion to the De­gen­er­ate Art doc­u­men­tary is strong: ‘Hun­dred years ago they’ve would have KILLED us for what we’re mak­ing in this class. Lives were de­stroyed, that was hor­ri­ble!’ Bad Chick­en watched the doc­u­men­tary twice, still shocked at the content.

Well, give or take about 20 years. Stu­dents men­tion when they usu­al­ly watch things about the Nazis, they don’t cov­er art. Be­fore this class, who even knew Hitler was an artist – ?

Bad Chick­en con­tin­ues: ‘This opened a whole new thing I nev­er learned about – if you did dif­fer­ent art – if you LOOKED dif­fer­ent, you could be killed for it.’

Strong state­ment. A com­ment that cross­es decades.

I ask, ‘How far are peo­ple will­ing to go if one just looks different?’

Of course I’m re­fer­ring to the world to­day. Once one stud­ies his­to­ry, pat­terns emerge. Peo­ple do NOT like change, do NOT like new. And it’s an on­go­ing process. Ab­strac­tion was not only fright­en­ing, but dan­ger­ous and banned.

I can even get into how the ab­strac­tion in the FLomm game has turned off some gamers, be­cause the game play en­vi­ron­ment isn’t fa­mil­iar. Been asked a few times, ‘Why can’t it just be out­er space or something?’

‘Peo­ple at­tend­ed the De­gen­er­ate Ex­hi­bi­tion and were shocked at the work they were see­ing. So how is this dif­fer­ent to­day; per­son­al ex­pres­sion in cloth­ing, tat­toos, pierc­ings, lifestyle – is the back­lash any dif­fer­ent; or even worse: How far are peo­ple will­ing to go to stop what’s new?’

Foot­note: Look up what hap­pened to Kaz­imir Male­vich, af­ter Josef Stal­in turned against the avant-garde in Rus­sia.

As with any of these class­es we have a dis­cus­sion. About to­day. Don’t change my world, I like it just the way it is. What about peo­ple who don’t have the rights you have? Who cares, they must have done some­thing wrong. (things I’ve heard a lot over the years).

The world to­day: Hu­man be­hav­ior doesn’t change, it just adapts.

I note VICE’s cov­er­age of ISIS – on­line and on HBO, where ‘they’re do­ing what 60 Min­utes SHOULD be doing.’

Hitler also hat­ed jazz. New forms of mu­sic were also out­lawed, check out the film Swing Kids (1993) for the mu­si­cal side of things.

And yes, I also com­pare Nazi Ger­many to the town in Foot­loose. Be­cause.

A stu­dent brings up Robin Williams in Jakob the Liar (1999) and Life is Beau­ti­ful (1998) – and we men­tion Amazon’s pi­lot The Man in the High Cas­tle (2015), adapt­ed from a Philip K. Dick sto­ry, that runs with the con­cept what if the U.S. lost World War II? His­tor­i­cal fic­tion is a great way to bring to life (and fill in gaps in) his­to­ry. Same thing with class.

art deco + threads
To fill in at this point, I add a lec­ture show­ing what hap­pens to mod­ern de­sign out­side the Bauhaus. How dec­o­ra­tion in­ter­min­gles with Mod­ern to cre­ate Pop­u­lar Mod­ernism, what we know to­day as Art Deco.

‘In or­der for Mod­ern to reach a larg­er au­di­ence, ab­stract gives way to a dec­o­ra­tive ap­proach. That’s where what we’re learn­ing brings il­lus­tra­tive form back into play. In fact, books were pub­lished to show how any­one can de­sign in the mod­ern way!’

We talk about the Bauhaus in the U.S. – af­ter the Nazis shut the school down in 1933 – and how anti-Ger­man sen­ti­ment (re­in­forced by WWI, reg­u­la­tions against Ger­man bier brew­eries in Mil­wau­kee as a ma­jor part of pro­hi­bi­tion – and WWII on the hori­zon) man­aged to close down the Bauhaus again – in Chica­go (Mo­holy-Nagy wasn’t even in­formed what hap­pened, he was told by his stu­dents the school was be­ing shut down).

all thumbs
Up next, we look at stu­dent sketches.

IM­AGE

Then we dis­cuss Max Bill, math­e­mat­i­cal think­ing and The Swiss In­ter­na­tion­al Style – I cite him as be­ing at odds with Jan Tschi­chold – af­ter Nazis ar­rest­ed Tschi­chold – which may have re­sult­ed in Tschi­chold aban­don­ing The New Ty­pog­ra­phy and bring­ing clas­si­cism back into his work (say Tschi­chold three times fast).

Max Bill, Print, 1938

We dis­cuss oth­er Bauhaus mas­ters – such as Gun­ta Stöl­zl – who built her work to match the weav­ing equip­ment – and I draw a com­par­i­son to the way things are de­signed at Ital­ian fash­ion house Mis­soni.

Gun­ta Stöl­zl, Tex­tile Design

Mar­i­anne Brandt and col­lage – be­ing a fore­run­ner of Pho­to­shop. One can make any­thing out of pho­tos, all one needs is scis­sors and glue!

Mar­i­anne Brandt, Col­lage

Ly­onel Feininger, who pro­vid­ed ‘at­mos­phere’ at the bauhaus (I think of him as a thin John Cleese) – Amer­i­can car­toon­ist who spent most of his time ex­per­i­ment­ing in the Bauhaus print workshop.

Ly­onel Feininger, Bird Cloud, 1926

Paul Klee didn’t know colour, so he went to Tunisia which had in­cred­i­ble light­ing (great place to shoot a Star Wars film) and learned how colour re­al­ly works, ‘Colour has got me. I no longer need to chase af­ter it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the mean­ing of this hap­py hour.’

Paul Klee, Caf­fè a Tunisi, 1914 

back to the beginning
So the ba­sis for what we know as de­sign is still fright­en­ing to some. And this seems to be the big top­ic again this week.

I Don’t Draw de­cid­ed to shore up things – checked out Graph­ic De­sign The New Ba­sics (as I rec­om­mend­ed) – and signed up for a week­end life draw­ing class. To learn to draw.

We did note, we see a bit of Pi­cas­so in her work. And there’s some­thing cool go­ing on with her abstractions.

But, as she’s work­ing on her stud­ies for her fi­nal, there’s NO WAY she can cre­ate any­thing that doesn’t have a drawn im­age tied to it. For the mu­sic genre im­ages, for I Don’t Draw, every genre MUST be rep­re­sent­ed by some­thing lit­er­al or she sim­ply can’t do the project.

We’re back to BAU3, as we talk about tech­niques for get­ting past what’s in one’s head. We dis­cuss again Things Have to Be This Way and I Don’t Do This and I Don’t Do That. And how rushed this class was as a sum­mer course (it IS a sum­mer course) and (the line I hear the most in ALL my class­es), ‘I’ve Nev­er Done This Be­fore,’ which is usu­al­ly what I hear just be­fore a stu­dent turns in crap­py work.

‘You’re here to do what you’ve nev­er done be­fore. Oth­er­wise this isn’t college …

text
Then … ‘Holy shit,’ comes from one of the students.

She’s read­ing her phone. It’s from I’ll De­cide What Home­work I’ll Do. He hasn’t been in class since I saw him in the hallway.

‘Ap­par­ent­ly he’s in the President’s Office.’

‘Uni­ver­si­ty President – ?’

‘Yeah. The text says, I’m here with the Pres­i­dent of the school. He’s re­al­ly con­cerned with the class. He is head­ed over with Cam­pus Po­lice. The teacher is fired & is go­ing to be replaced.’

If you ever feel your heart stop, with­out a real heart at­tack hap­pen­ing, this is it. This is not go­ing to go well. I brace for what­ev­er is go­ing to come next.

‘My moth­er thinks you’re crazy. What you’re teach­ing is not or­di­nary,’ says an­oth­er stu­dent. He looks pret­ty pissed off at what he’s do­ing. At this point, they all do. Es­pe­cial­ly I Don’t Draw.

Star­ing at me. They’re all star­ing at me. Some­how I press on, shaky voice I de­cide to con­tin­ue the class. ‘Great this, is go­ing to be fun.’

All I can think of, tho, is fif­teen years of teach­ing and some­how an an­gry stu­dent has brought in a col­lege pres­i­dent to end my career.

‘Well, I know art and that’s not art!’ re­sounds from a stu­dent I haven’t seen in weeks.

‘You al­ways have to learn things the hard way. Can’t do things the way every­one else does them.’

‘There are ways things are done around here. Why do you al­ways have to change things?’

‘You’re a hor­ri­ble per­son. If you’d just lis­ten to me every­thing would work out.’

‘Wait, you ac­tu­al­ly care if they learn? What if they don’t care, it re­al­ly shouldn’t con­cern you. They’re adults, let them be.’

‘They’ll even­tu­al­ly learn col­lege doesn’t teach any­thing. Life is where you’ll learn.’

‘You ac­tu­al­ly teach the cur­ricu­lum? What’s wrong with you? You should teach what you know. Cur­ricu­lum is for the bu­reau­crats in the meet­ings. Just give them a few things to do, some quizzes and move on. That’s all I do, so I have time for my art. They don’t care so I don’t care.’

Don’t like these voic­es. They ham­mer, over and over. Time for a sub­ject change …

type
Some­how TY­POG­RA­PHY – as an art form, as some­thing nec­es­sary, keeps com­ing up. I cov­ered it quick­ly a few class­es ago, so I go over a few oth­er things worth men­tion­ing. Even though my mind is on the cops that are about to show up.

‘Type is like mu­sic. It’s al­most as old as mu­sic, tho we don’t know how old mu­sic is, cause type wasn’t around so no one could write the date down.

‘Also, any­where type ap­pears is Graph­ic Design.

‘So ty­pog­ra­phy is the most im­por­tant com­po­nent of graph­ic de­sign – and even tho the gen­er­al pub­lic be­lieves that type just ap­pears out of thin air, it’s over­looked, tak­en for grant­ed, a util­i­ty – tho it is as com­plex a field of study as any­thing else we cov­er. That’s why I teach so many dif­fer­ent type courses.’

We talk about the com­plex­i­ty of mu­sic and how type can be just as nu­anced. We dis­cuss the pur­pose of type, ‘to con­vey a mes­sage,’ or more di­rect, ‘to be read.’

I then talk about what hap­pens when artists (or stu­dents) get their hands on type for the first time. They want to play with it, fuck with the let­ters, do crazy things. And typ­i­cal­ly this gets in the way of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Type is root­ed in his­to­ry, chang­ing our al­pha­bet – the way we read – re­al­ly screws with things.

Not to say, it hasn’t been tried.

I bring us back to the Bauhaus and Her­bert Bayer’s Uni­ver­sal Al­pha­bet (1925). The idea was to lim­it type cast in met­al to just one case (be­ing an eco­nom­ic, even green so­lu­tion). Bay­er came up with an al­pha­bet (de­void of dec­o­ra­tion) that was most­ly low­er­case. Be­cause low­er­case is what we read most, why use up­per­case if it’s re­al­ly not necessary?

The idea didn’t catch on. Un­til around 1961, when de­sign­er Paul Rand adapt­ed it for the Amer­i­can Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny:

Out­side the Bauhaus, Paul Ren­ner ran with the idea of a Geo­met­ric type­face – adapt­ing con­cepts from the Bauhaus to cre­ate Futura.

But, of course, even Ren­ner start­ed with a screwy version.

For about five years, he lec­tured about his Fu­tu­ra ex­per­i­ments. And this led to oth­ers cre­at­ing geo­met­ric sans serif types be­fore Ren­ner was done with his.

Even­tu­al­ly Fu­tu­ra was re­leased. Cleaned up with just enough tra­di­tion­al type el­e­ments built in that it holds up to­day – as a ra­tio­nal type, with hu­man­ist el­e­ments. And this pissed off the Nazis, who sub­se­quent­ly ar­rest­ed him.

(Note the curved strokes on the low­er­case a and the coun­ters on the e. Based on pen­strokes, these are the hu­man­ist touch­es he added.)

Mar­ket­ing ma­te­ri­als for Fu­tu­ra, show­ing the lat­est mod­ern au­to­mo­bile of the day:

Fu­tu­ra! Good enough for The Roy­al Tenen­baums and good enough for Field Notes.

and then, nothing
We con­tin­ue the class dis­cus­sion of type, go­ing over more mas­ters, more sketch­es – and even­tu­al­ly the clock runs out.

It’s noon, class is over and the Col­lege Pres­i­dent isn’t here. The bul­let seems to have been missed. For now.

Home­work:

Fin­ish your stud­ies. See you on FRIDAY.

—steve mehal­lo

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.

 
co
nti
nue
read
ing —

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